Introduction

The premier resource for people wishing to research British and Irish
ancestry from outside the British Isles must surely be the LDS Family History
Library, with its very large number of branches throughout the world, and its
immense collection of microfilmed material.

This apart, the problems of researching from abroad must differ from country
to country. Here I mainly provide information on researching from North
America, taken in the main from various directories and catalogues that were
kindly obtained for me by Ruth Satterthwaite. I hope this information will
prove helpful - but I cannot personally vouch for its utility. However, I also
attempt to provide some brief advice on commissioning research here, that will
I trust be of reasonably general utility.

Published Guides

Some recommended guides, aimed at North American readers wishing to research
their British roots, are:

"Whether you conduct your research in person or by mail, this book
will guide you in tracing your ancestor in Britain or Ireland. Noted
genealogist Angus Baxter provides practical instructions for locating records
abroad and shows how easy it is to do it by mail - or on a vacation
trip." Provides detailed information for each county, including listings
of the parish registers held in each county record office.

"Records chosen for discussion here date back to the mid-eighteenth
century and can be consulted in North America without great difficulty. .
.Records included had to fall within at least one of the following categories:
the collections of the LDS Family History Library; printed records which may
be in public, university or genealogical society libraries; records which
have been gathered in some central location in England; records which have
been indexed."

See also A-Z of
British Genealogical Research, a concise guide to researching British
ancestry at a distance, whose text was prepared for the Compuserve Genealogy
Forum, and has been edited for inclusion here by permission of the author, Dr
Ashton Emery.

Library of Congress Holdings

Publishers

Many genealogy books of British origin, including the excellent set of
Gibson Guides (booklets by Jeremy Gibson on various types of records, each with
a county by county listing of what records are now held where) are also
published in the USA, by:

Commissioning Research

When you have exhausted the possibilities of your locally-available
resources, you will probably want to have further searches carried out for you
here. The ideal solution is to find a conveniently-located cousin with whom you
can cooperate on researching your family. Failing this, you might be able to
obtain some assistance - perhaps in exchange for help you can give them - from
members of family history
societies based in the areas which your ancestors come from.

In general, though, you are likely to need to commission professional
assistance. Many record offices and some family history societies either
provide such a service, or will send you a list of genealogists and record
agents for their area. Such a list may well be accompanied by a disclaimer,
saying that inclusion in the list does not imply an actual recommendation. In
such circumstances you might also seek advice from the appropriate professional
association:

Many professional genealogists and record agents advertise in the (UK)
Family Tree Magazine, and in the newsgroup soc.genealogy.marketplace. A number
of record agents specialize in obtaining birth, marriage and death certificates
from the General Register Office (St. Catherine's House), London - and provide
a much cheaper and faster service than the official postal service.

At the time of writing, relaively few record offices or family history
societies here have, leave alone will respond to queries sent by, email -
though the number is increasing. You will therefore need to conduct most of
your interactions with them by post. It is standard practice when writing from
abroad to enclose a self-addressed envelope and an International Reply Coupon.
(Such a coupon can be exchanged here for surface mail postage stamps.) However
a cheaper alternative is to obtain a supply of UK and/or Irish stamps - perhaps
from your local genealogical society.

Making Payments from Abroad

The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is
copyright 2001 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the
permission of the author.

Sending Cash Overseas

Did you ever need to pay for a copy of a birth or marriage record held in
some archive outside of your own country? This can sometimes be difficult. Not
every repository of genealogy data in the world is equipped to handle credit
card transactions. While credit cards are becoming more pervasive, you may well
find places that still require cash or checks. The problem is that they
normally require payment in the currency of their own country. How do you pay
them when you cannot easily purchase pounds or francs or crowns or rubles?

There are several ways to send foreign currency. First of all, you can go
to your local bank and buy a cashier's check in almost any currency. However,
the fees are quite steep. Many banks or credit card agencies charge a minimum
of $25.00 for sending cash abroad. That isn't cost-effective for a $5.00
check!

One service that I have used in the past is Ruesch International. They
will sell you checks in foreign currency. However, Ruesch now seems to be
focusing on business transactions and has raised their fees to $20.00 and more
for single purchases of checks. Information is available at
http://business.westernunion.com although you will
have to make a phone call to place the order. There is no on- line ordering at
that site.

A second method is with International Currency Express. While usually
cheaper than Reusch, they are still higher-priced than what I want to pay. You
can find details at:
http://foreignmoney.com

I'd still suggest using a credit card wherever possible. The currency
conversion fees charged by VISA, MasterCard and American Express are much lower
than the fees listed above. In addition, credit cards are generally safer. You
can usually get your money back from a credit card company in case of
non-delivery of the goods, something that is much more difficult when using
checks. However, when the receiving agency will not accept a credit card, check
out the above alternatives.

In Canada, most banks, Trust Companies and Credit Unions allow the purchase of
foreign money orders. Money orders can also be purchased through the post
office. Info is available at
Canada Post's website
under Supplementary Residential Services.

A Note on Telephone Numbers

The official international standard for citing a telephone number takes the
form:

+(44) 1234 567890

Here the plus sign signifies whatever code is needed locally in order to get
an international dial tone, and 44 is the international dialing code for the
UK. (The code for the Republic of Ireland is 353.) The next group of numbers
identifies the exchange.

However, within the UK the above number would be typically be cited as:

01865-273216

or, in a document which is more than a year or so old, as:

0865-273216

(In April 1995 almost all area codes in the UK were altered by the addition
of a one after the leading zero.) In either case, there in fact might be
additional hyphens and/or spaces - these have no significance.

This Information Service contains copies of, and links to, documents that
might give telephone numbers in various different formats, at the whim of the
author/editor - it is hoped that the above explanation will enable any reader
to interpret such numbers correctly, wherever he or she is located.